Ask HN: Wife's Instagram account was deleted – what now?
Today in the morning, she woke up and browsed her Instagram account on her phone. Suddenly, logged out and redirected to her other Instagram (work) account.
I tried to help her find a support ticket, but there is nothing even remotely close to that on "Metas" help page.
Any ideas? Has anyone experienced this before? Are there any Metamates who can help?
This is the email she tried to send them, but it went to void:
"I was on my Instagram page and suddenly got a message on Instagram that I’m logged off. I tried to log in and it said that my account can’t be found. I did not get any email from IG about my account disappearing or it logging out. What can be done in this situation?"
25 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 77.6 ms ] thread- Find Instagram PMs on Twitter, DM as many as possible
- DM Adam Mosseri (head of Instagram) on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook (from another account)
- Repeat the above on LinkedIn
It's an aggressive list of actions, but if getting the account back was really important to me I would try it.
A friend ordered a moto phone from an ecommerce site that's now as good as shut down in India
Moto said phone was duplicate or something so they can't do repair
site said phone was sold 1yr ago we can't redund or replace. Issue is there was no IMEI number inside the phone. And the inly way of knowing it was to open the phone in a moto store
I tweeted cust support twitter and the ceo daily for a week
A week later he got an email saying they will refund but will use obscure 11th century mechanism and he'll get money in 15days
I tweet harassed said CEO again mocking him for using antique tech when he runs a tech firm.
Refund done within a few hours.
Coming to govt. I got 10x electricity bill. Called helpline they didn't pickup when in rare case calls were connected. This happened for 1 month and I almost gave up and decided to pay the money
Decided to rage tweet expecting 0 result as govt don't care like corporate
Posted 1 tweet looping in all state local and federal ministers. Forgot all about it and went to work. Imagine my surprise when I read an email that they found and fixed the issu3, apparently it was their mistake. Email was sent less than 30min after my tweet which amazingly had 0 likes 0 retweets and 0 indication that anyone has read it. Email subject: Twitter complaint regarding customer xyz.
My sister's business account was hacked (phished probably) and was contacted by the scammer asking for money to get the account back. IG's support is practically non-existent and their automated tools don't help at all if the scammer changes the username/email. She got it back a few days later by going through her state's government. Apparently they have contacts at FB/IG/etc to escalate cases affecting businesses based in their state. She got put in contact with this rep through a friend of a friend so I don't know how easy it is to make use of this "resource". You'd think it would be easy for IG to notice that an account being logged in from a new location, username changed, password changed, and email changed is probably a victim but their systems did nothing.
If it's a personal account your best bet is to make noise online, have a friend that works at IG, or do what the other comment here says about contacting IG PMs on Twitter which is a sad state of affairs. Whatever you do DO NOT pay anyone online promising to get the account back. There are plenty of people with "testimonials" of people they have helped, don't fall for it.
Got into the mugshot bot loop for weeks and weeks. Absolutely nothing.
Reached out to Facebook Legal. Nothing.
Ended up ditching Facebook and Instagram. Won't look back.
Haven't used it since then, but I also didn't miss it.
I have to admit, I would be sad if I lose my Twitter account.
Unfortunately I can't help. Thanks for posting though.. it is a lesson for all of us. Backups and alternatives are important!
I can't be the only one who laughed at this!